x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The Minefield

In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

0:54:36

‘Adult time for violent crime’? What commitments...

The Minefield ·

2025/11/19

Earlier this month, in response to a disturbing rise in youth crime in Melbourne, Victoria’s Labor government adopted a key policy that the LNP took to last year’s Queensland state election.The LNP policy pledged (among other things): to apply adult penalties to children under 18 who committed a range of violent and non-violent offences; to impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain offences committed by children; to abandon the principle that detention should only be used as a

en

0:54:51

Will weight loss drugs entrench cultural expectations...

The Minefield ·

2025/11/12

Ever since 2023, a class of GPL-1 based drugs — which for two decades were used to treat type 2 diabetes — have been heralded as a “revolution in weight loss” and signalling the “end of obesity”. While these drugs go by different names, they’ve become popularly grouped under the shorthand “Ozempic”.It’s no exaggeration to say that Ozempic has become a cultural phenomenon. Millions of people in the United States, Australia, South Korea, the UK, the EU take semaglutide injections,

en

0:54:36

Is the experience of beauty slipping away in an age...

The Minefield ·

2025/11/05

The availability of increasingly powerful generative AI tools has radically altered the creative process. Anything that we can imagine can be turned into an image, a video, a text, a song — the process is frictionless, effortless, fast and has led to a torrent of digital effluent (what is often called “AI slop”) being pumped into our online habitus. And while the content may range from the banal to the surreal, from the nonsensical to the utterly indecent, it is at least instantly

en

0:54:24

Protests are a democratic right that can go wrong —...

The Minefield ·

2025/10/29

For the last two years, there has been a steady drumbeat of protests — sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly — in the centre of major Australian cities involving hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands and, in one instance, hundreds of thousands of people. The vast majority of these protests have been pro-Palestinian and opposed to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.But this isn’t the only cause that has brought people out onto the city streets in their hundreds and thousands. Climate

en

0:54:08

When democracy abandons decency — with George Packer

The Minefield ·

2025/10/22

For the second time this year, millions of people have taken to the streets of cities and towns across the United States in response to the authoritarian tendencies and tactics of the second Trump administration.These crowds gathered under the “No Kings” banner to register their deep disapproval of: immigration raids and deportations without due process; the deployment of National Guard troops to cities against the wishes of elected officials; the use of legal threats, intimidation

en

0:54:36

Learning to inhabit silence — with Stan Grant

The Minefield ·

2025/10/15

There is no doubt that silence can be a form of cowardice: a refusal to speak up or speak out on behalf of others, an unwillingness to join our voices with theirs lest we be made to bear their punishment. In such a case, we could say, the absence of words is not empty but full — full of self-protection, of ego.Being silenced, in turn, can crush the soul — to have our words treated with contempt; to speak into the void, knowing that there is no common medium that will bear our

en

0:54:45

What role should emotion play in the fraught politics...

The Minefield ·

2025/10/08

The politics of immigration has returned in recent months — and returned with a depth of feeling that suggests it never truly went away. It’s always there, lingering just beneath the surface of Western societies, waiting to be tapped into by politicians skilful (or brazen) enough to harness its power.So Donald Trump went to the 2024 presidential election excoriating his predecessor’s record on immigration and for “losing control” of the southern border control; by contrast, he

en

0:53:55

The ‘fascism’ paradox — with Jason Stanley

The Minefield ·

2025/10/01

In a remarkable column from 1944, George Orwell bemoaned the sheer range of social and political phenomena to which the label “Fascist” was being applied — to the point that he believed the word itself had become “almost entirely meaningless”. And while it conveyed little more than a term like “bully” would, “Fascist” nonetheless carried an emotional charge, a degree of opprobrium, that such an everyday word did not.For this reason, Orwell concluded, the label should be used both

en

0:54:56

Mailbag — we answer your questions

The Minefield ·

2025/09/24

This week is the first ever “Minefield Mailbag”, where Waleed and Scott try to respond to what’s been on our listeners’ minds.The questions they take on cover such diverse topics as society’s obligations to self-professed “sovereign citizens”, whether NATO is to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, why “virtue signalling” may not be such a bad thing after all, and the discrete relationship between philosophy and gardening.If you’d like to submit a question for a future mailbag,

en

0:54:58

Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a test for...

The Minefield ·

2025/09/17

It would be hard to overstate the significance of Charlie Kirk within the conservative movement and in the Trump administration. By some reckoning, his influence and social media prominence were second only to Donald Trump himself.As the founder and face of Turning Point USA, Kirk was pivotal in driving Trump’s appeal among younger voters — particularly young men. And, indeed, his singular appeal was to have made a muscular, self-assured brand of conservative Christian nationalism

en

0:54:26

Bonus episode: Jane Austen’s enduring charm

The Minefield ·

2025/09/15

In August, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh from The Bookshelf on Radio National, teamed up with the indomitable Sophie Gee — Professor of English at Princeton University, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Sydney, and co-host of the podcast The Secret Life of Books — and Scott Stephens from The Minefield, to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen (1775–1817).In front of a live audience at the State Library of New South Wales, the quartet

en

0:54:42

What are we doing when we let someone ‘save face’?

The Minefield ·

2025/09/10

Whether it is in geopolitics or in social and personal relationships, the overweening desire to “save face” can have manifestly unjust and outright damaging consequences.Those who continue to languish under Iran’s oppressive regime take little comfort in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei being afforded the opportunity to shore up his public standing following the US missile strikes on its nuclear facilities. And Hannah Arendt correctly observed at the heart of the ‘Pentagon Papers’ a

en

0:54:36

The threat that AI poses to human life — with Karen Hao

The Minefield ·

2025/09/03

There is something undeniably disorienting about the way AI features in public and political discussions.On some days, it is portrayed in utopian, almost messianic terms — as the essential technological innovation that will at once turbo-charge productivity and discover the cure to cancer, that will solve climate change and place the vast stores of human knowledge at the fingertips of every human being. Such are the future benefits that every dollar spent, every resource used, will

en

0:54:36

Are there inherent limits on what should be said in...

The Minefield ·

2025/08/27

In the middle of August, the Bendigo Writers Festival found itself at the centre of a firestorm after over fifty participants decided to withdraw — some claiming they were required to engage in a form of “self-censorship”, and others withdrawing in solidarity.Reports have it that, two days before the festival was due to open, a “code of conduct” was sent to those taking part in the one of the four La Trobe Presents panels, “urging compliance with the principles espoused in [the

en

1:03:59

If AI causes widespread job losses, is a Universal...

The Minefield ·

2025/08/20

This week the federal government’s much-anticipated, and just as hyped, Economic Reform Roundtable has gotten underway. Central to the agenda is how to boost national productivity — which is, roughly speaking, a way of measuring the resources needed both to produce certain goods and to be able to afford to buy certain goods.Put simply: greater efficiency leads to greater affordability and higher living standards. When the same amount of time, labour, investment and raw materials

en

0:58:00

Should childcare be offered by for-profit providers?

The Minefield ·

2025/08/13

In March, an ABC Four Corners investigation detailed widespread instances of abuse, injury and neglect in childcare centres across the country. Just a few months later, in a climate of already heightened public awareness and media scrutiny, a series of deeply disturbing allegations came to light of child sex abuse in childcare centres in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.The nature and extent of these instances of neglect and abuse, as well as the fact they involved the most

en

0:54:27

What does it mean to be committed to ‘net zero’?

The Minefield ·

2025/08/06

At the end of July, there was a strange juxtaposition of events that seemed almost designed to highlight the fault-lines which run through the political, legal, economic and ethical responses to climate change.On 23 July, the International Court of Justice handed down a non-binding advisory opinion that climate change constitutes an “urgent and existential threat”, that nations have an obligation to prevent climate change, and that the “failure of a state to take appropriate action

en

0:55:46

What would be achieved by recognising a Palestinian...

The Minefield ·

2025/07/30

On 24 July, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, as part of France’s “historical commitment to a just and durable peace in the Middle East”. Just five days later, UK Prime Minister Keir announced that the UK, too, will recognise a Palestinian state in September:“unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza and commits to a long term

en

0:53:44

What are recommendation algorithms doing to our sense...

The Minefield ·

2025/07/23

There are few things more peculiar to a person than their preferences. Why it is they enjoy one genre of music over another, or a particular artist within that genre but not others. Why they derive specific pleasure from a certain type of fiction (romantasy, say, or Scandinavian procedurals) whereas others (like Agatha Christie’s Poirot crime novels or dystopian sci-fi) leave them cold.And then there’s that whole undergrowth of what we might call “guilty pleasures”: low-brow books

en

0:53:34

Why are regressive expressions of masculinity now so...

The Minefield ·

2025/07/16

In a justly famous 1910 essay titled “The Moral Equivalent of War”, the American philosopher William James rejected the “fatalistic view” that war is an inevitability between nations, and expressed his hope of “a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples”.For all this, however, James confessed that he did not believe “peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states … preserve some of the old elements of

en

343 results

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger